Soviet Georgia's Premier Ousted After Riot

MOSCOW--Soviet Georgia's leaders removed the republic's Communist Party chief and premier yesterday, five days after troops dispersed protesters in a bloody melee that killed 19 people. The KGB chief was named party leader.

"Nobody and nothing can justify the deaths of innocent people," said Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the former party chief in the southern republic who was dispatched to his homeland after Sunday's bloodshed, in a speech to the local party plenum that made the leadership changes.

Communist Party First Secretary Dzhumber I. Patiashvili, who had accepted responsibility for the tragedy, had his resignation accepted unanimously by the party's Central Committee after "heated discussion," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Gennady I. Gerasimov.

Givi G. Gumbaridze, who has been Georgia's KGB chief for two months, was elected to replace Patiashvili. Gumbaridze, 45, previously served as party leader in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital city of 1.2 million people.

Premier Zurab Chkheidze also was removed at a separate meeting of Georgia's Presidium, or top government body, the official Tass news agency reported from Tbilisi. Nodari Chitanava, a Central Committee secretary, was named the new head of the republic's government, Tass said.

Georgia's president, Otari Cherkeziya, also offered to resign, and the matter will be considered at the next session of Georgia's Supreme Soviet parliament, which is empowered to remove him, Tass said.

Tass quoted Shevardnadze as saying the lessons from the incident were "difficult and bitter," adding that the events were "detrimental" to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reform policies.

Gerasimov, speaking at a Moscow briefing, did not give a reason for the shakeup in Georgia but earlier said leaders there had accepted responsibility for ordering the troops to clear a square of pro-independence demonstrators. At least 19 people were killed by official count.

The republic's Communist Party newspaper Zarya Vostoka, in an editorial carried in part by Tass, placed part of the blame for the bloodshed on Georgia's party leaders, saying they couldn't escape responsibility "When a political decision taken by the leadership was carried out, unfortunately, in such a way that it led to heavy moral, ethical and human losses."

However, Zhorab Lomidze, deputy director of the official Georgian news agency Gruzinform, said by telephone from Tbilisi that the officials were replaced "because they did not maintain order in the city."

Signs posted at Tbilisi State University after the clash outside local government headquarters vilified Patiashvili as a "killer." The 49-year-old Georgian was elected first secretary in July 1985, succeeding Shevardndze.

In shaking up the leadership of the southern republic in the Caucasus Mountains, Georgian party officials were following a pattern set last year in the neighboring republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. After four months of nationalist protests there, the Armenian and Azerbaijani party chiefs were fired, apparently for their inability to halt the unrest.

In announcing the Georgian shakeup, Gerasimov said, "There was a heated discussion, I might say, and the plenary meeting has met the request of Comrade Patiashvili of relieving him of the post of the first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party unanimously."

The Georgian party's ruling Politburo described the situation in Tbilisi as "strained," with universities and schools still closed by boycotts. Tass said factories and public transport were working normally.

Lomidze, however, said some businesses were not operating normally because of a strike that began a week ago in the city 900 miles south of Moscow.

An estimated 2000 people marched through the streets Thursday for the first funeral for one of the victims.